


Quintus in Athens

by Tevildo



Category: Cambridge Latin Course
Genre: AD 79-80, Alexandria (city), Athens, Gen, Naples, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:46:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tevildo/pseuds/Tevildo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Therefore I and my freedman boarded ship. First we went to Greece and lived for a short time in Athens. This city is most beautiful, but its citizens are rowdy. Many philosophers, who every day crowded the market, used to hold debates among themselves. After a few months we wished to see other cities." (<em>from</em> Quintus de se, <em>Cambridge Latin Course</em>)</p><p>Over a dish of cream and a piece of fish, Clemens tells the Sacred Cat of Isis his side of the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quintus in Athens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Thank you to my lovely beta, [Llwyden](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Llwyden/pseuds/Llwyden%20ferch%20Gyfrinach) for noting the many points of ambiguity and confusion. Without her help this story would have been entirely incomprehensible. Apologies to Plutarch, Pliny and L. Vibullius Hipparchus; I tease because I love. This story contains depictions of slavery and various forms of prejudice.

There's a time in every gentleman's life when he must needs visit Greece. Now was my master's. Up the gangplank I followed him, he following Alexander in turn, who was herding his mother and brothers—he was fortunate his family all survived—and if I looked back at the last, before taking that step that would see me onboard, my master's step was resolute.

As I say, I looked back. Neapolis wasn't as heavily-stricken as other cities round about, but even here was the black gaping evidence of fires, and all the countryside was covered with ash as if under a fall of dirty snow trampled by many boots. Perhaps I shouldn't have looked. For, to this day, whenever I think on Campania, that had been my home always until I stepped off that gangplank so long ago and gave myself to Neptune for the second time, I don't see green hills rising into dark forest slopes, I don't walk between bright, new-painted houses nor smell the port, its foreign perfumes and fish sauce and furnace smoke, nor hear the familiar accents of home. Instead everything is mute, winter-grey in the fullness of summer, all come to ashes under an ashen pall.

In all these years I have never gone back. I daresay I never shall.

Understanding came later. At the time it was as natural as breathing to pause and turn, and take one last glance at all I'd known before leaving my life behind for good. Where I was going men would know me only as Q. Caecilius Clemens. I consoled myself with this thought.

They told me the god smiled upon us, that we had fair sailing weather, that the voyage was swift and the sea smooth as Alexandrian glass. For myself, bent double over the rail clutching my belly and gazing into the dizzying depths below, I can't in truth concur. Let it be said that over that passage I took many opportunities for consolation. I thought of Iulius' kindness in taking my late master's land off my new master's hands—all unfarmable now, for a few years at least. I thought of Alexander, tarrying like the neighbour's dog in Iulius' townhouse in Naples, loath to leave my master, yet chafing to bring his mother and brothers safe to his father in Athens before winter closed the seas to our passage. I thought of my master, who'd behaved impeccably at every turn, but who I knew wished things not to have gone so easily, for there's nothing like industry for keeping grief at bay, and nothing like idleness to sustain it.

Before long enough, with his affairs settled, my master began to grow restive. Any other man would've become testy and querulous, and his slaves and freedmen would have got the brunt of it; but though I don't deny he made liberal use of Iulius' excellent wine my master pulled himself out of despair, looked about him, and feeling Alexander's anxiety resolved to sail at once to Greece.

He booked our passage on the very next ship. That is the sort of man he is.

Alexander was delighted and most grateful, perhaps more so than was necessary. But all such thoughts fled my mind as soon as the ship weighed anchor, so that Alexander had my master to himself until we made landing, far too many days later. You must not suppose me jealous; indeed I was not, but rather felt sympathetic to him, for I well knew my master's taste.

They will tell you that the Greeks in Greece are unlike those in Rome or here in Egypt. If you do anything you must not believe them, for all Greeks everywhere are the same. Though Athens was in every way unlike Italy. Where in Campania kind nights chase warm autumn days, in Piraeus the sea breeze blows chill under a fierce sun and evening brings the cold; no fields rich with corn and vine crowd the roadside, but ruined walls reveal bent olives with scraggly beards and fingers clinging tight to the thin bare soil; Pompeii though ancient bustled and throve gaily-painted, while Athens sighs like the splendid tomb of a childless couple untended for many generations, alive only with lizards in the heat of the sun.

All this was in the days before our present Emperor, you understand; they tell me the place is now quite revived. Perhaps one day we shall see him come to Egypt; it seems the sort of thing he'd do. Perhaps he'll renovate our temple when he comes.

In any case, lizards were what they looked like, those grey men declaiming at street corners and at the market, each surrounded by his knot of youths, keen-eyed and still. I admit freely that at first I was afraid for my master. It took several days to understand the situation, for they quarrel and rant, these sophists, but it's all empty talk: no fists, no cudgels—nothing so warm-blooded as our elections in Pompeii, and certainly nothing to what we used to see here almost daily in the streets.

But you can imagine me that first day, weak from the horrors of the passage, loading my master's possessions onto a scrap of a mule—hired at the port for an exorbitant price. Then the uphill trek to the city proper, working up a sweat in the searching wind, and afterwards making our way, I with eyes peeled and keys held between my fingers, through the too-empty city populated with shouting, arguing men. I feared any moment we'd be caught in a riot. We never were, of course, in all the time I was there; the Greeks are too civilised for that. They are full of it, civilisation, as they never cease to remind us. In this way we reached Thrasymachus' house in the Ceramicus—though the name means nothing to you. Alexander's father used to stay there when he was in Athens on business, as Alexander does now, I suppose. On that day, as I say, exhausted by weakness and fearful vigilance, and coming down with a chill besides, the house made no impression on me. I didn't even notice it lacked a garden.

That night Thrasymachus threw a party in honour of his guests. My master, to make a point of it, invited me. How could I refuse such a request? I spent the evening at the bottom position on the lowest couch, trying to make a passable impression by not falling off or throwing up. Perhaps I even succeeded, for no-one afterwards ridiculed me for doing either.

I remembered two things about that party. The one was that the man on my master's right, some local functionary who was constantly scribbling in his notebook, was happy with a wife and young sons at home. I heard that later he lost his only daughter, and am grieved for him, for he seemed a nice enough man. The other was that the girl sitting in the chair beside their couch, incongruously a philosopher, was very pretty. My master talked a good deal with her.

The next day I woke with a raging fever and was obliged to stay abed for a fortnight. I'm told they despaired for my life.

Having recovered I sacrificed at once to Isis, our protectress—she who heals the sick, renews the weary, and raises from the dead. By then my master, though himself no philosopher, was making daily visits to the Academy with the same diligence he shows in his business dealings, and my life contracted to following him about on his rounds from Academy to bath to party; in other words, into one never-ending debate. That functionary—I later learned he was at the time a deputy from Chaeronea and is now governor of Achaea, so he knew what he was about—had it right when one evening during a particularly vehement discussion—this time about statecraft, if I remember rightly—he concluded that it was proper for the Greeks to be governed by the Romans, because otherwise nothing would ever get done. Though he spoiled the effect somewhat by immediately writing this observation down in his notebook.

Soon I discovered the Academy gardens and, my master being no doubt pleased to be rid of me while he courted, spent many hours tending the plants, both familiar and strange, and learning for them new uses. Athenian winters are mild as a rule, the earth not hardened by frost, so there was plenty to be going on with. Though even here argument never ceased; if not the uses of wild cucumber compared with cultivated, they disagreed over the optimum conditions for growing each of the twenty-seven varieties of flax and the properties thereof, until at length the garden became tiresome to me and all plants a reminder of discord.

Presently my master said to me, "Euphrosyne talks to me well enough, but she never accepts my presents and declines all my invitations. I have to follow her around town every evening and beg entrance to the parties she attends. Does she want me to marry her, to carry on like this? And I will, too. Soon I shall do it if only for spite."

This last was unworthy of him and he knew it. Perhaps I should have realised then that the diversion was becoming the problem. The girl did care for him, as much as a follower of Stoicism could care for any man; a blind man could see that, and nor was it prudery that made her run. Indeed I've always thought she fled him as she fled into sophism: philosophy as consolation, a retreat from life. My master held out too red an apple for her peace of mind. She's Greek after all, and no doubt reminded herself of Atalanta. But perhaps I misjudge her—who can tell? I've never claimed to understand women and their ways.

So I said, "Her father won’t consent; you've wealth and name, but not yet distinction. First you'll have to make your way."

Perhaps things wouldn't have come to a head if it hadn't been for that party at Hipparchus' house. I didn't go, for it was an exclusive sort of affair and rather intimidating; my master barely sneaked in himself. Although by all accounts Hipparchus was an indulgent host, I wasn't much sorry to miss it, for I'd found a pretty thing in Thrasymachus' household and was looking forward to time alone. Then the next I knew of it my master was whistling in the morning and had that smile on, you know the one, that proclaims to everybody what the wearer had been up to the night before.

We heard nothing of the girl all day and thought little of it, until on the next day, asking after her, they told us she'd gone away on lecture tour up north. You can imagine what happened next.

Spring was around the corner and the snows had melted, but the stormy season hadn't yet passed. Nobody had any doubt she'd have taken a ship if she could.

My master was torn. He would follow her. No, that was tantamount to forcing himself upon her, and he wished to give no offence. He would wait for her patiently until she should return. She would return, he was sure of it. She was disgusted and would never come back knowing he was here. By staying he was preventing her from returning home. He must leave. He would follow her and implore her to marry him. That would make everything right. No, first he would beg her forgiveness. He would have her avenge her injury upon him. Perhaps it were better to spare her the trouble and do the deed himself. But how could he lay a life upon her conscience, even his?

So he debated within himself for a week's worth of days and nights, as if a team of philosophers dwelt in his head. Alexander took him to parties, where he was able to affect no more than pleasantness and courtesy. He grew tired of arbitrating between the factions at Thrasymachus' house, in the baths, at the Academy. In everything he derived as little pleasure as one who accompanies a man complaining to a merchant about a consignment of tiles.

I know this because I was there. The man was that deputy from Chaeronea, of course—who else could it have been? When he'd come along to buy the tiles he'd noted very carefully, in his notebook, their exact number and dimensions as quoted by the merchant. However when his craftsmen unpacked them, he discovered that though the number was correct the dimensions were not. So slight was the discrepancy that it was unnoticeable on inspecting the tiles one by one, but only when many tiles were placed together. This was the occasion for his return to Athens, and having heard his story Alexander, knowing my master to need something to do, volunteered him to accompany him to bear witness.

It's a tedious tale, for the affair wasn't settled until it was brought before the courts. I expected us, having refused to bribe the jurors, to get the worst of it. However the judge was a sensible man, and faced with the choice between some shopkeeper and two gentlemen of worth and education he knew what was best for him. The merchant was vehemently offended—whether on account of the fine or his damaged reputation I can't rightly say—and Plutarch—that's his name—rather disproportionately overjoyed. It's only political cases the Greeks play at like games; they take private suits every jot as seriously as we do.

My master, by now thoroughly sick of the affair as he was of everything in Athens, asked Plutarch why he was so delighted.

"My dear," he replied, "I've won not the value of those slivers of tile that I've been cheated out of, but a victory for justice and responsible government. From my own wealth I can afford the shortfall many times over, yet I was charged with a task by my city, and it behoves me to carry out my duty. Surely in life there is no greater joy?"

And while Plutarch took out his booklet and wrote it all down, my master went away sorrowing, for he was an exile from a city destroyed.

"Let's go to Rome," I said, the seas now clear for sailing, "for although you're a Pompeian, you're a Roman first of all."

To which he replied, "One day when I'm ready, but first I've more of Rome to see and more to learn—and other duties besides, too long neglected."

The next day we set sail for Alexandria.

Let me not describe the voyage. But alighting to a warm breeze and the bustle of a lively city I gave thanks to Isis, our protectress, for the hope of a new beginning—which hope was fruitful, as you have seen.

As I said, understanding came later. For unknowing the goddess' intent, when my master offered me that first shop in the street of glassmakers, that as a transplanted sapling I might set down new roots, I was at first reluctant to accept. I'd no wish to leave him whom all else had left. But the duty of a freedman, though not to obey, was to acquiesce, and looking about my narrow life at this burgeoning city and her fertile vale beyond it came to me that I may best love my master with honour and honour him with success. This I set out to do.

So I've a factory now and shops and warehouses in my possession, and having raised my sons as gentlemen so do they their sons in turn, and every day I please you with a supper of fish and cream. Then shall men look upon me and mine and say he must be very great who is the patron of such a client as Q. Caecilius Clemens.


End file.
